The Grand Inquisitor

To the Grand Inquisitor, Christ’s rejection of the first temptation—the temptation to create bread to feed himself—represents his choice to grant human beings free will rather than using miracles to impose his authority upon them. This free will, in the Inquisitor’s eyes, is a terrible burden:

You want to go into the world, and you are going empty-handed, with some promise of freedom, which they in their simplicity and innate lawlessness cannot even comprehend, which they dread and fear—for nothing has ever been more insufferable for man and for human society than freedom! (252).

Humans do not want freedom, according to the Inquisitor. They want to be fed and given rules that they can follow: “[I]n the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: ‘Better that you enslave us, but feed us’” (253). Their very nature prevents humans from making the most of their free will “because they are feeble, depraved, nonentities and revels” (253). This presents humans as not suited to the burden of free will because they are not divine like Christ. By championing free will, Christ essentially gave permission to humanity to live in error and sinfulness and effectively barred most of them from ever finding happiness and redemption.